Acoustic Lesson 14 - Basic Scale Patterns

Blazing fast solos are widely one of the most popular and most climatic playing styles on guitar. Acoustic guitar playing isn’t usually where we find this type of soloing but know how to solo and use scale is a major part of learning acoustic. A scale is a series of notes played one after another that have a relative distance between each note creating a particular pattern. You can use scales to make melodies and solos. Instead of playing 3 or more notes at a time like chords, scales are made up of single, individual notes.

In GLI we will show the ‘box pattern.’ The box pattern is where the scale is played across the neck as far as possible, usually two octaves and a note. It will look like a box…hence the name. The nice thing about these patterns is that they can be moved up or down the neck to create the same scale in a different key. So let’s learn some good scales for soloing.

The chromatic scale is the first scale you should learn in order to understand some of the vocabulary when learning new scales. The chromatic scale is made up of the 12 possible notes in music. There are the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. But there are also sharps and flats for some of the notes. With these sharps and flats included the 12 possible notes are A, Bb, B, C, Db, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G and G#. This would make the A chromatic scale. If you were to play the A string on your guitar open and play every fret up to the 12th fret you would have played the A chromatic scale.

We have already discussed major in minor scales but there are also a few other scales that are necessary to know in guitar soling.  Probably the most commonly used soling scale is the blues scale. Derived from the natural minor scale, the blues scale consists of the 1st, b3rd. 4th, b5th, 5th, and b7th. A C blues scale would be C, E b, F, F#, G, Bb, and back to C. Naming the notes while you play them will also help you get to know your fret board. Here it is played on a single string and in a pattern.

Another soloing scale popular in country and blues is the major pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic is the same as a major except the 4th and 7th are omitted from the scale. A C major pentatonic would be C, D, E, G, A, and back to C. Here it is played on a single string and in a pattern.

Lastly one other great soling scale but less used than the others is the minor pentatonic scale. The minor pentatonic scale is derived from the natural minor scale, using the 11st, b3rd. 4th, 5th, and b7th.  A C minor pentatonic would be C, Eb, F, G, Bband back to C and is very similar to the blues scale. Here it is played on a single string and in a pattern.